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Ordinary people can live extraordinary lives, and this is certainly true of Tommylee Smith\u2019s great grandmother Charlotte Davison. \u201cAll I knew of my great grandmother was that she was known as Lottie, and that she lived in West Auckland, County Durham,\u201d says Tommylee. The discoveries that he has made have opened his eyes to the hardships that people suffered in the past.<\/p>
Charlotte was born in 1890 into a mining<\/a> community in Bishop Auckland. Her mother was Hannah Turner who was married to a man named William Davison.<\/p> \u201cI ordered Charlotte\u2019s birth certificate<\/a> and was devastated to discover that she was born in Auckland Union Workhouse<\/a>. I\u2019ve read that there were terrible conditions in some Victorian poorhouses. I hope that Charlotte and Hannah didn\u2019t suffer neglect.<\/p> \u201cIt was equally shocking to see that no father\u2019s name was given on the birth certificate, even though Hannah was married to William at the time. Charlotte must have been given her stepfather\u2019s surname<\/a>. I\u2019ve yet to discover who her real dad was.\u201d<\/p> The many tragedies in Charlotte\u2019s life began when she was only two years old. William died in 1892, leaving Hannah with two young children to raise. She later remarried to miner Thomas Lee, and the couple had four more children.<\/p> Tragedy struck again in 1902 when Hannah died aged 37 of an embolism. Charlotte was orphaned at the age of 12, and had to work from a young age.\u00a0<\/p> She became a laundress, which was an exhausting job. Garments were turned in a tub using a large, heavy \u2018dolly\u2019 stick, shaped like a stool. Then they had to be scrubbed on a metal board, rinsed out and turned through a mangle. Finally, there was the ironing.<\/p> In the 1911 census records<\/a>, Charlotte was boarding with the Jennings family in Gomer Terrace, Bishop Auckland. Romance blossomed between her and one of the Jennings\u2019 sons, Jesse, who worked in a colliery.\u00a0<\/p> They married the following year, and their daughter Lilian Mary was born in 1912. \u201cNo Further tragedy came a year into the marriage. \u201cLilian died at the age of six months in April 1913, after suffering whooping cough and convulsions. Two months later, Jesse Jennings died of tuberculosis.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cCharlotte must have been heartbroken by two such terrible loses. She remained single for another seven years.<\/p> \u201cIt was lovely to find some good news, and discover the marriage of Charlotte and my great grandfather Albert Denham, which took place in 1920.\u201d<\/p> The couple went on to have seven children, including Tommylee\u2019s grandmother Edith.<\/p> \u201cCharlotte never told any of her descendants about Lilian. It was probably too painful to speak of.<\/p> \u201cRelatives who knew my great grandmother remember her as a kind and caring person, who worked hard to support her family and was always there when they needed her.\u201d<\/p> In 2019, Tommylee took a DNA test<\/a> with Ancestry<\/a>. The results revealed surprising connections in the USA. One of these was a link to Elizabeth Thorne Bynon, who lives in Pennsylvania.<\/p>